Mr Bassel Zebian

Consultant Neurosurgeon

Special Interests

• Management of brain and spine tumours (including pineal, ventricular, thalamic, brainstem and spinal cord tumours).
• Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) disorders including hydrocephalus, intracranial cysts (including arachnoid, colloid and pineal cysts), intracranial hypertension (IIH), normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH), Chiari malformations and syringomyelia.
• Endoscopy and minimally invasive neurosurgery.
• Spinal and cranial neural tube defects including open and closed defects, tethered cord and fetoscopy repair of open spine bifida, myelomeningocele and myeloschisis.
• Treatment of the degenerative spine (slipped discs and trapped nerves) with a special interest in minimally invasive spinal approaches including unilateral biportal endoscopy (UBE).
• The neurosurgical management of paediatric neurovascular conditions (haemorrhages).

Biography

Bassel Zebian studied medicine at King’s College London.  He completed his neurosurgical training in London rotating between King’s College Hospital, St George’s and the Hurstwood Park Neurosciences Centre.  He undertook a paediatric neurosurgical fellowship at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.  He is currently a Consultant Paediatric and Adult Neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – one of the busiest in the country and at the forefront of neurosurgical innovation.

He was the training and education lead from 2015 to 2019 and is currently the lead for undergraduate medicine for neurosurgery. He is lead for paediatric, teenage and young adult neurosurgery. He is the patron of the King’s College London Neurosurgery Society which was founded by the medical students he taught. He has an active interest in research with a number of national and international presentations and publications. He is the Principal Investigator on a number of trials. He is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Neurosurgery at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

He is the organiser of the international Endoscopy in Neurosurgery course (hands-on course covering all aspects of neurosurgical endoscopy – cranial, spinal and fetal) and is the UK representative at the International Federation of Neuroendoscopy, the Neuroendoscopy Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies and the European Society of Unilateral Biportal Endoscopy.

He received a global innovation in healthcare award for his endoscopic and minimally invasive techniques which have allowed access to previously inaccessible lesions and their resection using the endoscopic ultrasonic aspirator with one of the largest series of such resections in the world. He has the largest UK series of paediatric brain and spine tumour resections using Gliolan (intraoperative tumour fluorescence). He is the neurosurgical lead on Fetoscopy repairs of open neural tube defects (spine bifida), a role that won him his second global healthcare award. This is the only service of its kind in the UK.

He holds a National Clinical Impact Award which he received from the Department of Health and Social Care which oversees the NHS in England.

Related services

• Neurosurgery